It's currently the number 4 seller on Amazon in the video games category, ahead of The Division and No Man's Sky. Unless they're gaming their system I'd say they sold a pretty significant number of them. Also, this was apparently the significantly more expensive launch bundle that comes with 2 move controllers and a PlayStation Camera; I'm not sure how valid the "but it's cheaper" argument the summary makes is. The real answer is probably one that PC gamers will hate to hear: there are many, many more PS4s in the wild than there are PCs that meet the minimum specs of the Rift.

Yep, the headline is right. Humans crashing into cars that are obeying all the rules to the letter does expose a flaw: in the rules. They are impractical to the point of being almost impossible to follow safely. I guarantee if you got stuck behind someone on the road following all the rules religiously you'd be pissed off until you could get around them. That's not a problem of them, it's a problem of the rules no longer making sense (if they ever did).

I don't understand why The Island is so hated. I thought it was a pretty good effort, especially for a Micheal Bay movie.

If your doctor is even close to competent they will go look at the literature on any drug they prescribe. Yes, the sales reps can create bias, but they don't magically make a doctor incompetent.

What.

No.

We have several empirical results that point to a decoupling of the majority of the mass in a galaxy from it's light emitting matter. The bullet cluster shows us two galaxies colliding, we can see the light from both galaxies coalescing around each other. By measuring gravitational lensing, we can also see that the majority of the mass of those galaxies passing right through each other without interacting.

We know beyond any reasonable doubt that the majority of the mass in the universe does not interact with regular matter, does not produce light, does not interact with light beyond gravitational lensing. That is literally the definition of what dark matter is. There are a handful of viable theories (probably only 2 or 3 likely ones) as to what form that matter takes, but that hardly means we don't have evidence of dark matter existing.

Per rule 1, the 1500 gram limit is "dry" meaning not including fuel which would presumably also mean not including the compressed air. It's the compress-ability that really matters here. You could get a lot more energy into compressed hydrogen than compressed air. But it's against the spirit of the competition.

Rule 2: Rocket must use compressed ambient atmospheric air as its energy. Other gasses have much higher compression ratios and there needs to be a baseline so the record is fair to all. (see section II for special rules regarding bottled air).

Because Amazon doesn't have a monopoly on small electronics sales?

Given that I can buy a chromecast from any of several dozen other stores, the answer is a resounding no. That's not how anti-trust laws work.

If you want me to use your instant and prime video options, the correct course of action would be to make the available everywhere, not to remove products that you refuse to support (and given that I've seen Chromecast apps knocked out in a weekend there's really no excuses). Oh, and make it so that shared prime actually shares all of the prime features instead of just shipping. It's incredibly stupid that prime videos don't work on my phone because my wife's Amazon account has the primary prime account.

I work in production test. It is a constant battle with people who should know better trying to ship things that shouldn't be shipped.

I could absolutely imagine a scenario where someone comes up to an engineer says "we pass emissions in this scenario, but not these others" and then pushing, cajoling, even threatening that guy into "bending the rules" and "making things work" so they can start shipping. How much does the average car factory lose for each hour of downtime? Even more likely if the issue is a fundamental flaw that will cost millions to fix. All it takes a couple guys trying to be heroes or save their jobs.

Again, I'm not saying that's what I think happened, especially in light of how widespread the issue appears to be and how fast executives are jumping out with their golden chutes. But I do work in a similar industry in a similar capacity, depending on how the internal culture it would be easy for one or two people to make this happen.

That depends if the low emission mode was already coded and used in some other circumstances. If for example the engine enters that mode after idling for 30s. It could be relatively simple for one or two programmers to include a simple check that detected the dynamo scenario and put the engine into that mode, it would almost certainly be possible to obfuscate what's going on so a casual review wouldn't detect it.

Do I think that's what happened? No. Lone coders don't go off the rails that far without direction from above. If nothing else, it's doubtful the software engineers were directly aware of the emissions problem without anyone else being in the loop. But it is at least theoretically possible.

To be fair, those other planets wouldn't have several billion humans all clamoring for the same dwindling resources. It is very possible that when competition from fellow humans is factored in, it would be easier to obtain food on Mars than on a "doomed" earth.

The SLS Block 2 will (if it ever flies) has a lift capability of 300,000 lbs. 10 launches is expensive, but not ludicrously so. Pulling rocket fuel out of the Martian atmosphere is going to cut that number by quite a lot. I could see a Mars mission being accomplished with 3 launches. One to put the ascent vehicle/rocket fuel extractor on the surface. A second batch of supplies. And one to bring the crew.

An O'Neill Cylinder is really just a sub-category of rotating space stations. It's a station, in space, that rotates to produce artificial gravity.